“The girl who had started the joke was named Jenny. They used to go swimming together, floating on an old inner tube Dewi Ayu kept in the car. Those had been happy times, before the thunder of war. Young men would stand near the water, and old men would sit in the sand under umbrellas with tobacco pipes in their mouths, all there just to ogle the young women in their bathing suits. She also knew what they were up to in the changing room. What they called the changing room was really a natural spring at the edge of the beach, enclosed by woven bamboo. Even though the men’s and women’s sections were divided, she often caught eyes peeping through the cracks in the weaving. She would peep right back and shout, “Oh my God, yours is so small!” The men would usually flee, mortified.”
Beauty Is a Wound